Joyful living

Tags

bleeding from the heart, Cycling, Depression, Friends, Happiness, Jill and Kevin's wedding dance, joy, Nieces, Skiing, yoga classes, Yoga teacher

Watched this today…

Found my eyes were leaking (a bit) and I have to admit I felt a little envious of the joy being expressed.

Most of the time, we western-world folk do not express this much fun and happiness in our day-to-day lives. Or even weekly. Maybe not even monthly.

Sure, some people might. But most of us don’t due to habit, cultural acceptance, and generally because most people are bleeding from their hearts instead of singing.

Aren’t we?

We hurt, we try to keep our hurt to ourselves and we barely ever notice that everyone else around us is doing exactly the same.

This morning as I wandered around my flat getting ready for work, I realised that (for now) my interactions with depression are in recess.

I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in ages and I can actually get out of bed in the morning with relative ease. I’m starting to be much more excited about becoming a yoga teacher (OMG, I’ll be qualified at the end of the year!).

And yet, still… it’s possible to wander around and feel less than joyful for most of the day or week. Especially when doing a job I could care less about (except for getting paid).

My joy comes from my yoga classes, my nieces, cycling, and talking to my friends (most of them live far away).

But this morning I also realised I could add more joy into each day.

A little like the way BlissChick schedules time to dance regularly.

Because joy shouldn’t be something we experience infrequently like clinging to a life raft within a sea of unhappiness…

Then there’s Tricia’s latest post (a meme) – 6 things that make you happy.

There’s a world of difference between depression going away and actively seeking out the things that make you smile.

While the thrall of depression has lifted, the habits I formed to cope with that existence also need to be broken down. The staying in and not socialising. The having fewer expectations of my life. The not taking care of my appearance or what I eat. The not looking to the future… these are but a few.

In Tricia’s comments, I wrote my own 6 things that make you happy list (definitely in no particular order):

1. Thinking about becoming a yoga teacher
2. My fan girl night (meeting my celebrity crush earlier this year) – still makes me smile!
3. My glorious nieces
4. My yoga school’s spiritual home in north-east Thailand
5. Snow skiing
6. My wonderful friends (both virtual and IRL kinds)

It’s not a bad list, but if the meme had asked for 10 things, I might’ve come up a little short.

Which is ridiculous when there’s so many things to be happy about, right?

So. Here’s to the energy behind the wedding dancers in the video.

Even if we don’t actually break into dance as we wander throughour days, we each deserve the feeling that goes with this kind of celebration.

And I’ve decided the next step to climbing out of the dark, dank abyss of depression includes adding more activities into my life that are designed to tap into that kind of joy. Yes!

I’ll let you know how I go.

~Svasti

Summer Christmas Wishes

Tags

Childhood memories, Christmas, Egg-nogg, Garbos, Horse drawn sleigh, Presents, Roast dinner, Santa, Seafood, Skiing, Summer

It’s a funny thing being on the ‘other side of the world’ from whence our ancestors came… and so our customs and traditions, whilst hailing from the north, are often out of synch with the seasons.

Here in the far, far south, as far away as those Brits could manage to create a penal colony… it’s mid-summer, not winter (although sometimes lately you wouldn’t know it, crazy weather).

For years, grown up Aussies have been trying to explain to kiddies why we have snow on Christmas cards, and why Santa doesn’t get hot wearing that thick coat when he delivers presents down here.

I’ve often craved a wintery Christmas experience (which might sound crazy to those of you who live in it). In fact, I still plan to bugger off to Austria or Canada one year, ride in a horse drawn sleigh, drink egg-nog, actually have to wrap up warmly, go skiing, and enjoy that hefty wintery roast dinner.

My family’s Christmas traditions for years did include the roast dinner and all the trimmings – try eating that in the heat! But in the last half a dozen years we wised up. Now its all seafood smorgasbord – baked fish, salmon, crab, mussels, oysters (eeeww to the former two), prawns, scallops – and on it goes. Fresh Australian seafood. Mmmmm…

Childhood Christmas memories are of stinking hot days tearing around in a swimsuit and jumping in the backyard pool my dad built. Splashing about, possibly with our new inflatable pool presents or diving rings or the like… or riding our new bikes out front… some years driving from one end of town to the other, squished in the back of the car, fighting amongst ourselves, probably in uncomfortable heat… visiting one set of grandparents for lunch and one for the  evening meal (leaving us very full).

For several years we had a ‘neighbourhood Santa’ – a guy sitting on the back of a station wagon dressed in a red suit, throwing lollies to the kids on Christmas Eve. Never found out who he was. Try ‘n’ get away with that these days!

All the fathers in the street would give a case of beer to the garbos [Aussie slang for garbage collectors] in the week leading up to Christmas. There was a definite sense of community… less about commercialism, more about people having a good time.

It was never (fortunately for me), a particularly religious time. Which is just as well given I seem to have been a born pagan/heathen. My family were basically without religion or any kind of spirituality.

By far, the most prominent childish Christmas memory is my excitement about the magic of it all. Before I didn’t, I really and truly believed in Santa. I was a child of faeries and mysteries. It seemed quite reasonable that a fat guy in a red suit could pull off the great present delivery once a year.

So, it was always hard to go to sleep. Then I’d wake up like clockwork before dawn, creeping out of the room my sister and I shared… to the lounge room where, to my delight, were three over-sized Christmas themed pillow-cases hung over the back of dining room chairs and packed full of presents!!

As middle child, my sack was in the center. I’d carefully, quietly unpack each new toy one at a time. Checking to see if Santa had read my letter and given me what I desired. After re-packing everything in reverse, if I hadn’t been ordered back to bed yet, I’d then systematically check my sister’s then my brother’s sacks too!

I never ever swapped anything, but I’d wake my sister up when I’d finished my investigations to tell her Santa had been, trying to drag her out of bed to see for herself. If she didn’t come, I’d start telling her what Santa had brought her! 😉

My parents always heard me at some point – get back to bed now – they knew I’d be up, like the ghost of Christmas present, haunting the goodies til it was ‘official’ get out of bed time.

That waking up early thing on Christmas day, it lasted a long time. Twas my late teens actually, before I was able to kick that unconscious habit.

Wishing you all a wonderful day, however you celebrate…

~Svasti

P.S. For a very different and very beautiful take on an Aussie Christmas… read AnthroYogini’s Deep Desert Christmas!